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The Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to drop 60 seats in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Haryana, Punjab, and Bihar, according to senior Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

Drawing on booth-level feedback from party voters, Chidambaram, in an interview with BloombergQuint’s Sanjay Pugalia, said the Congress and its allies were ahead of the BJP and its allies in seats that were polled in the first four rounds of voting.

The BJP tried to scale up its presence significantly in Odisha, West Bengal and the Northeast to offset any potential losses in the north and the west. Chidambaram said the “BJP will suffer its biggest shock in these three”.

“In Uttar Pradesh, five rounds are over, the gathbandhan is doing well, I am told. The Congress is not doing so well,” Chidambaram said.

The Congress president has made it clear that where we can win in Uttar Pradesh, we will put in all our effort to defeat the BJP. Where we cannot win, we are going to help the gathbandhan.